


Waiting

by SharpestRose



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Buffy Wishverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dawn in the wishverse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting

I got in trouble at school again this morning.

Ms Burke rapped her knuckles against the side of my forehead, really hard, and started shouting.

"Stop dozing off in my class, Summers, or it's back to your personal seat outside the Principal's again."

I sneered at her and looked back down at my textbook. I hate student teachers, they think they're so hot just because they managed to get all the way to college. Like there's anything special about being smart. Buffy, that's my sister, is smarter than any of my teachers but she knows there's more important stuff than learning out of stupid schoolbooks. She won't even read the books the watchers give her.

She makes me go to school, which I hate. I only took science because I thought I could learn to make a bomb or something, but it's all math. I've got detention from now until the end of forever, but Buffy lets me skip out on it if I practice my self-defence. She won't let me drop out completely, though, which is stupid. She's never here, and Dad's dead, and Mom's in the looney bin, and as if the watchers are going to give a shit about me. I wanna get a real job, a kid my age can make really good money if she knows where to look... but Buffy would probably throw me through a glass door again if I even thought about it seriously.

I bet they totally spank themselves over Buffy, those creepy watcher guys. They look at me sometimes, and whenever that happens Buffy drags me home and scrubs all my lipgloss off and makes me put on clothes that practically reach from neck to ankle. She's such a control freak, just because she was a virgin at thirteen she expects me to be this angel.

I bet she'd still be a virgin if not for Kakistos. She's all icy and 'Duty duty duty blah blah, this world's so tough to live in, boo hoo for me, I have super powers and get to fight monsters and my sister has to stay in school'. She keeps saying she's gonna die soon, because it's been like four years since the last slayer died and Buffy's kinda long in the tooth as far as the girls in her job go. But I think she's just trying to get my hopes up.

I love my sister, I do, she's cool, and that time Billy tried to do me behind the sheds at school she was all wham! broken nose and crack! missing finger, which was excellent to watch, but she looks at me and her eyes go all soft and dewy, as if she still thinks I'm the little sister she grew up with. One thing I've learnt in my life is that it's easier to love people once they're dead - I mean, Dad was cool, but sometimes we'd fight and one time he hit Mom, well he said sorry for that but it's much simpler to look back now and miss him than it ever was to actually live with him. And every time the phone rings I cross my fingers that it's the hospital saying that Mom's gone, but it's always some stupid new assignment for Buffy.

Buffy's been gone three weeks, this time. She was on one assignment but yesterday she called (she calls every day at exactly the same time, 3:55, to make sure I come straight home from school) and said something else had come up, I should get more money out of the trust fund for groceries and keep up with my studies until she got home. Yay for me, I get all the adventure I can handle.  
I once saw her kill a girl with a weathervane. Totally for real, swear on my life. It was gross, this brass chicken sticking out of the girl's chest. Barf much? See, once Buffy's dead I can cry and miss her and remember what she was like before all this happened, when she was all cheery and nice and, ok, vain, but everyone was back then, instead of Little Miss Slayer who tries to protect me from everyday life and never even brushes her hair. I'll be able to love her properly then, instead of being all uncomfortable and annoyed with her all the time like I am now.

Oh, don't feel sorry for her, it's not like nobody gives her affection. Those watchers do everything but hump her leg whenever she walks into the room, and there's a girl who hangs round our house a lot, practically more than Buffy herself. I think she loves my sister, which is a shame because this chick's a badass usually and then goes all fawny and dopey around Buffy. Yeah, because Buffy's such a prize catch.

My shrink, he's dead now, used to say I had a lot of resentment towards Buffy. As if I needed to be told. Even with that scar she has now Buffy's so much prettier than I'm ever gonna be, she says I'm just insecure but if that was true then how come nobody ever hangs around the house pestering her as to when I'll be home again, nobody ever telephones to make sure I'm healing all right when I get hurt?

I wish she was dead. Then everyone would feel sorry for me and hug me and pay attention to me, I would be the important one for a change. Nobody would tell me that I can't wear whatever I like, nobody would scrub my makeup off just because it made me look 'like a tramp'. Nobody would look at me all sad and make me go to the hospital to visit Mom even though I hate it there. I could drop out of school and never go back, ever.

It's 4:27 and the phone still hasn't rung. I'm trying to work on my assignment for Ms Burke so she doesn't get me suspended again but I can't concentrate. My stomach's all weird, like it's full of rocks.

4:28.

The phone screams into life and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, grabbing up the handset.

"Buffy?"

"Um, hello, I'm calling from Calmvale Psychiatric Hospital. Is there an adult I can talk to?"

"No." I say, the rocks in my belly feeling heavier. "Is it Joyce? Is she all right?"

"It's my sad duty to inform you that-"

I drop the phone back into the cradle. Have to leave the line open.

Buffy's gonna call.

Any minute now.


End file.
